Microsoft Excel
Available graphomate product for Microsoft Excel
In the world of business you will find Microsoft Excel everywhere. There are a lot of reasons: The program enables quick and easy storage of data, their analysis and the visualization of results.
As part of the standard programs of Windows pcs as well as the flexibilty for countless application scenarios explains the wide distribution in the business world.
Also working Microsoft Excel is very common within the SAP system infrastructure. The program SAP Analysis for Office enables the user to load data from SAP databases directly to the excel sheet and use the familiar Excel features to analyze, process and display the data.
Known functionalities like Power Query, Power Pivot and Power View have been integrated into the ‘younger’ reporting tool Microsoft Power BI.
The finishing touch: graphomate charts for Excel
In recent years the topic of a uniform notation in the business communication has become increasingly important – that’s good! The International Business Communication Standard (IBCS) lays the foundation for a uniform appearance of reports and presentations.
With graphomate charts for Excel you can easily create IBCS compliant charts. Charts can be generated with a few clicks, even by Excel beginners. So don’t waste valuable time to create IBCS charts with Excel’s built-in tools. Use graphomate charts instead.Save your time and use it for analysis and interpretation of your data.
Many of our customers wished to be able to use graphomate charts more universally: not only in SAP Lumira Designer (formerly SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio), but also in Microsoft Excel. Behind this request is a typical use case: You want to be able to use filter states of a graphomate chart in a dashboard in Excel, PowerPoint or Word. The export function of graphomate charts for Excel allows you to edit a dashboard visualization directly in Excel – data and settings are transferred from the web application.
In addition graphomate charts can be used in connection with SAP Analysis for Office. When updating the database, the adjustment in graphomate chart is done simultaneously.
Microsoft Excel as a BI tool?
The switch from command line based programs to graphical user interfaces is also the hour of birth of Excel. That was back in 1985 and the range of functions has grown continuously over the past 35 years.
Heavily nested queries, programming using VBA (Visual Basic for Application) and linking to other tools in the Microsoft Office Suite are characteristic features of the flexibility of Excel. As a consequence of its widespread use, data provision from a diverse range of data sources and systems is now often in Excel file format too.
The seamless communication between the programs of the Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint and others) also facilitates the embedding of graphics or tables in the familiar look. This protocol is called Object Linking and Embedding (OLE for short) in the Microsoft environment. For example, if an object is changed, this object is updated in all linked Office files when opened. A very useful function that always shows the current status of the data source.
The numerous possible uses of Excel make it appear as an all-round carefree package:
- Worldwide distribution through integration with Microsoft Office Suite / Microsoft 365 subscription
- Extensive calculations of the data possible (mathematical, economic and commercial purposes)
- Ad-hoc analyses through quick and easy data manipulation
- Collaboration with colleagues
- Connectivity to various data sources
Conclusion: Did you notice that we wrote “appear”? In the context of reporting and data analysis, we see the application area of Excel mainly in the area of short-term and manual data evaluation. We see it less as an all-in-one tool for comprehensive reporting and/or dashboarding. In our opinion, tools such as Power BI, Tableau or SAP Lumira Designer better meet the requirements of a transparent reporting tool.